Oh no. She looked over to where she had first found the Chief Imp riding his boar. Just over the hill there was a cave.
She nearly jumped to it, but a second thought stopped her. She had to make sure she was ready. She took stock of her skills and made use of the Buffs that might help, along with putting another 50 MP into her Mana Shield. There might even be a few more skills and spells to use, but nothing stood out short of having an actual knife, or sword, or bow and arrow.
Now she was ready.
She stepped into the cave, the lights were dim, she could hardly see. She wouldn’t want to continually cast Fireball just to see, it was expensive Mana. So she contended with using Focus, she could just see dark shades. Hopefully nothing could attack fast enough, or strong enough that she couldn’t defend.
The route was fortunately only really dark until she had found an Imp traversing the passage… and holding a flame! She killed it quickly and took his torch.
Focus was still on, really as a continual caution towards safety. She saw that in the Nap Time scenes. Players had kept Focus on mainly because of the solid advice that one should always be prepared, especially in deep dark caves, even if not so deep… yet.
KillPrinsX continued down the corridor of the cave, another Imp was found. Or found her. But in the end the Imp stood no chance against her honed HP Leech.
A few more straggling Imps later and she had finally made it to the center of the nest.
I wouldn’t say it was a warm welcome, or an unfriendly one. But she had no time to prepare or look for a strategical way to jump into battle. It was more on the order of, You found our home, now we’re all going to slaughter you.
They had the home ground advantage! All she had was a narrow passageway that funnels them to her.
Anyways, here they came!
Five had seen her at once and were sounding the alarms… wailing like maniacs, and then they started attacking, throwing rocks and coming in with bone knives.
KillPrinsX had time to throw another chunk of Mana into her shield and newly cast a few Buffs: Steel Skin and Mana Fortitude, while backing up quickly. Now she was ready to rumble!
She started with Confuse on the ones coming close. Then cast Fireball and followed up with more HP Leech while they were jumping around and screaming their flaming heads off.
She funneled the red particles quickly, feeling the raw power. They stand no chance against her!
And then a lightning bolt shot over their heads and hit KillPrinsX square in the chest!
She flew back, but no serious damage was taken. But her Mana Shield had broke and had a five second timer before she could activate it again.
Luckily the closer Imps were still shaking off the flames, otherwise she would have been dog piled.
She got up quickly and started jumping from side to side, all the while keeping her HP Leech funneling HP. More bolts of lightning sped by, but missed her by inches. She didn’t have much room to move though, the tunnel was barely wide enough for three people.
Eventually the first few Imps had succumbed, they had been higher leveled, taking twice as much to kill as the first tea bagging Imp that she had met in the forest.
But, behind them were even more!
She managed to put more Mana into her shield now, but she can't keep that up for too long, her Mana would bottom out soon.
Still, she used a Fireball, taking another good chunk of Mana. Now she didn’t have any MP left to attack, fortunately she had that special spell, and she used it. MP Leech!
She had to dart back and forth, jump around, and back up even more. At least there weren’t any coming from behind her, she was still in the mouth of the tunnel. Even then she had received a few deep cuts and her shield had depleted, leaving her to only fill it up once more.
Filling her Mana bar all the way up would take 20 seconds of MP Leech. It was fast, but it was a long 20 seconds, getting longer every time she cast a Fireball or re-upped her shield. She couldn’t dance around like this much longer either. Her HP was starting to take a toll with every few hits she had failed to evade, and her Stamina was slowly going with all the jumping.
She had just gotten a ding that told her she had just leveled up. HP, SP, SP back to the top, she decided to up her game. There’s a few more skills she’ll have to put to use…
Another five Imps had charged her, all with their bone knives flailing, she cast Confuse on all five of them at once, one of them needed a second hit, just to give her that extra second.
Now she cast one of those specials ones, a really special Buff. She pulled up the Skill Set of the Phoenix and selected the tier 3 Buff, Skin of the Phoenix. She felt it immediately, it was better than a shield. Her body now had a golden red outline that wavered like fire… like a Phoenix.
Now she attacked, one more Fireball and… ten Imps had all been blown back and rebounded off their family members!
She fired another one straight into the mob of the other fifty Imps. This was getting serious now.
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She tried another one, a simple spell. She summoned a rock and threw it. It wasn’t just a rock now. It was a frickin’ ball of magma! It exploded, as it should, and spread a small handful of firery coals onto the floor. She did another and another, keeping those Imps at bay.
She was getting full of herself, having too much fun throwing molten lava rocks, and a Chief Imp had thought so as well. He cast a lightning bolt right to her chest! She didn’t see it coming… her shield had broke… again! But she didn’t have time to worry about the shield, another lightning bolt had hit her, and now she was really stunned. She felt the shock, being stunned for a good few seconds more, but her HP didn’t take too much damage. Her buffs were saving her butt.
The Chiefs had taken that second of an advantage and turned the tables. Another bolt of lightning and she was on the stuck on the floor. The Imps had taken the queue began to surround her, beating her with clubs and knives. Her HP plummeted.
KillPrinsX did the only thing she could.
She cast a Fireball straight up, sizzling their hairs and causing the blast on the ceiling to rain down fire. The attack was so OP’d now with her Phoenix Debuff.
And even as they attacked with their bone weapons, fire debuffs had started to affect anything and everything that had touched her, those flames doing nothing to her.
She didn’t have time to rejoice, instead, she funneled more HP, trying to hold onto that last hope. If no HP… default.
But she wasn’t there yet. The Imps were dancing with flames on their asses and clubs, throwing them in their fury at the other Imps, or at the walls. Pandemonium reigned!
KillPrinsX had managed to stand up now, crouching to stay below the line of sight of the chiefs, and funneled more HP until she was out of the danger zone.
She took more MP.
Funneled more HP.
Cast more Fireballs.
More HP.
More MP.
Fireballs!
Level up!
Now all that was left was her and three flaming Chief Imps, and a very angry tied up Rottweiler, which had started barking halfway through the fight.
She stood her ground, barely taking the time to assess the situation before more lightning bolts started to come right for her.
She used Psychic Evade, appearing a few feet off to the left, then cast another Fireball.
One Chief down.
The next wasn’t too hard. She watched for his hand to go up, electricity to spark, and she jumped to the side once more. The bolt went way off to left field.
Fireball!
One Chief left.
She leeched MP, the final tease of the day, but out of necessity. A few more points to keep her from bottoming out on this last spell.
One more evade, one more Fireball straight to the chest, one last Chief Imp down!
She had done it!
She barely had time to breathe before…
Ding! Ding! Ding!
A whole load of prompts came through.
You have reached level 16!
You have 6 Skill Points for your use.
What?! Level 16?
She was excited to get to see the XP and battle log.
There had been 17,000 HP Leeched, giving her an incredible 1250 XP.
Evade had accumulated to 358 successful evades, which made sense with her strategic jumping left to right throughout the whole battle.
And with 75 Imps drained, burnt, or killed by their family; all giving XP amongst death, the kills accumulated to 9000 XP!
Then 4 Chief Imp kills, equaling 2000 XP. What?!
And amongst all of that were the skills and spells she had used, giving her almost nothing in comparison to the actual number of kills. The XP she got from skill use alone only totaled 4206 XP.
The first thought that came to mind was, Why didn’t I think of this earlier?! Actual kills give more XP than skills XP…
Actually she did, but the slow and lame grind of getting up to a sufficient level to kick some forest creature’s asses had put battling into the stratosphere, it was much more successful than she would have ever thought. Even the gold had said so, getting her bank up to 1343 gold.
Then, another thought: if she had been playing with other players, as in a group, she wouldn’t have gotten all this XP and gold… She probably wouldn’t have gotten herself nearly default by a tribe of Imps either. But she had saved her own ass herself… with a lucky shot and a lifesaving epic skill set. That skill set of the Phoenix isn’t something that anyone has, not at all. But then again, she could have been saved in a more usual way, like standard battle techniques, backup, healing spells, someone halving the danger just by them fighting side by side.
Oh well, she’s lucky. But lucky in her own way, not just by game stats and attributes.
So then, she’ll be able to pay off those debts soon enough. She looked quickly at the Robery’s debt that she still had to pay. Technically it was the next day already, she had been out late doing some shopping, the Portal took a bit of time, and then wandering through the forest and battling Imps had been time consuming as well. It was nearly midday. The daily debt payoff would have to be paid at the same time she had bought it. Nonetheless, she had plenty of money to spend. She could even pay half the debt now if she wanted to. It was probably a good idea, better to pay now than have to be paying later, when interest is so high… there wasn’t a description in the contract about what happens when she doesn’t have 105 gold to pay… she paid 500 right there, putting the debt down to 1500 gold. Bit by bit, every penny counts.
The next prompt was one which she had read about in the Player’s Guide to Default: How Not to Default, but it had surprised her that it came so early.
Congratulations! You have reached proficiency in HP Leech!
The skill has now evolved to a higher state.
Bloodsucker (tier 3)
Running low on health, up against a formidable foe, and just when you thought you’d default at the mercy of that giant monster… your skill has evolved. Squeeze his blood into your very own, drain his life away to save your own soul.
Rapidly take HP from the enemy at 100 HP per second.
Cost:
1 MP per HP
Gives:
2 XP per HP sucked
+3 HP per rank
+3 MP per rank
+6 Wisdom: Attack: Psychic
Congratulations! You have reached Rank 3 in Bloodsucker!
Wow, what a skill! This would be something to invest in in getting other skills up to this rank. It’s definitely not something one can get just by Nap Time. These are the kinds of skills real Gods have. Sooner or later she’ll be able to battle some big Titans and just watch their HP plummet.
Getting the battle highlights out of the way, she got another prompt. This one was a bit fearful.
Congratulations! You have slain over 100 Imps.
You are now on the Imps’s TOP 100 MOST WANTED! list. Coming in at #46.
All Imps will be looking for you and will be ordered to kill on sight. They will sense your presence, doubling their distance of perception of you. Imps’s will rage at seeing you, doubling damage and speed.
Beware!
This mark on your soul will stay with you after you default, though may decrease over time. The only way to waive this condition is to kill an equal amount of Fairies, Elves, High Elves or similar creatures and pronouncing your good standings with the Imps. Failure to do so will result in further consequences.
That was horrifying. She had literally started a war with the Imps, all by herself… and there was no one to help her.
Congratulations! Achievement unlocked! Be ranked on a Most Wanted list. “Most wanted!? Want some more?”
+2 Charisma: Appearance: Physical